Airbus Plans A350 Stretch Version, To Compete With Boeing 777X

Aircraft manufacturing of large commercial jets is basically a duopoly (assuming we don’t consider China’s COMAC to be a global player). Both Airbus and Boeing have as much business as they can handle, and aren’t in a position to ramp up production.

As you’d expect, this also means that there’s not much of an incentive to innovate beyond what’s currently on the market. However, that doesn’t mean we’re not going to see new variants of existing aircraft. Along those lines…

Airbus plans to make the Airbus A350 bigger, eventually

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury had an interesting discussion with Aviation Week about the company’s general product line evolution. Faury was asked about if/how Airbus plans to compete with the new Boeing 777-9, which is the largest passenger jet that will be manufactured (though it has already been delayed by six years).

While it sounds like this is still a long ways off from becoming a reality, Faury suggested that Airbus’ plan is to simply “stretch” the existing A350, rather than pursuing a clean sheet design for a new jet.

As he explained, “if our production capacities are limited, it would be counterproductive to create even more product diversity.” He suggested that competing with the 777-9 would “probably be a natural evolution of the product line – from the A350-900 to the -1000 and then to something that is a bit longer, bigger and more capable.”

As a reminder, currently there are two Airbus A350 variants — the smaller A350-900 (which is 66.8 meters long), and the larger A350-1000 (which is 73.8 meters long). As a point of comparison, the 777-9 is 77.6 meters long.

For context, the longest commercial jet currently in service is the 747-8 (which is 76.25 meters long). so the 777-9 will be longer than the 747-8. So if the A350-1000 is stretched by several meters, it should be able to have a capacity that competes with the 777-9.

This seems logical, but don’t expect it anytime soon

There’s of course merit to creating different variants of the same type of aircraft. There are upsides to that kind of streamlining, especially when it comes to crew training and fleet planning.

That being said, I wouldn’t expect to see this stretched version of the A350 anytime soon. For one, there’s just not the incentive to actually create a new product at the moment, given that demand for existing Airbus planes is through the roof, and a vast majority of airlines find that the A350-1000 offers sufficient capacity. Even when the 777-9 actually enters commercial service, I don’t anticipate some huge rush for airlines to order more of the jet.

Second, stretching an existing plane might be easier than creating an all-new aircraft, but it also comes with its challenges. We’re going to need to see more incremental improvements with the existing A350, so that the plane can be stretched without compromising range.

The good thing is that the A350 is still new technology, so evolving that product line probably makes a lot of sense. It’s different than what Boeing did with the 737 MAX, where it essentially tried to update decades-old technology.

Bottom line

Airbus plans to eventually stretch its flagship long haul aircraft, the A350, to compete with Boeing’s new 777-9. There’s no timeline for this happening, but it sounds like some number of years down the road, we’ll see something longer than the A350-1000, which can seat several dozen more passengers.

This is a logical development, eventually. Though for the time being, there’s not much incentive to introduce such a product, given that Airbus has all the business it can handle, and it’s not like Boeing is really posing much of a threat to the European giant.

What do you make of the concept of a stretched Airbus A350?